Daniel Gerhartz was born in Wisconsin in 1965 where he now lives with his wife Jennifer and where they raised their 5 children. His interest in art piqued at an early age when a teenage friend suggested they spend one rainy afternoon drawing. Enter Daniel’s studio today and you will see canvases, finished and unfinished, lining the walls, paints, brushes, and a palette flanking an enormous wooden easel which holds his latest work in progress.  The room is accented with overstuffed chairs, props and luxurious fabrics awaiting the next model.  His workspace reflects his style
of Realism that traces its origins to the great figurative and portrait painters of the late 1800’s.

Classically trained at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Gerhartz possesses effortless technical facility for painting and a deep, abiding kinship to the traditional artists from the late 19th Century. These artists provided inspiration through their understanding of the human form, nuanced brushwork, and their ability to capture light as both illumination and a metaphor of hope.

Gerhartz’s subjects, often family or friendly locals as models, hover between traditional figurative painting and portraiture.  His paintings are not portraits per se, but rather vignettes or archetypes of maternal love, childhood simplicity, or grandfatherly affection, often evoking an earlier and more humble way of life. Daniel finds inspiration and meaning in long-standing ideas about human existence, the beauty of the simple, and the depth of family relationships.

Daniel states, “My goal is to effectively record the richness of our human experience, the contrasts between life and death, the dance and dirge, the beautiful and common, joy and sorrow, hope and despair, while in the end, offering a message of hope and pointing the viewer to the eternal.”

Daniel Gerhartz has established himself as an important American painter among the leading talents of our time.  He states that he works to keep the theme within an individual painting universal or not overly specific, with the hope that this will allow the viewers to bring their own life experience into the piece.
Gerhartz equates it to the way he feels when he listens to a great piece of music. “The beauty or narrative,” he says, “is not just in the music, but how it moves you in the context of your own journey. It can send you to a place deep within, a sacred place.  This is what I hope to achieve in my work.”

“As I paint my subjects from life and have the privilege of studying the awe inspiring breadth and depth of the beauty of the created world, it is humbling to ponder the greatness of our Creator.  Johann Sebastian Bach said it well as he signed his work, ‘Soli Deo Gloria,’ to God alone be the glory.”

Daniel’s paintings have won many prestigious awards and are in art collections worldwide.

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